Art Dana and Walt Stuart

Following is a clearly selfish me-centered post about two other people.
I’ve noticed in the strange world of REPUBLICAN logic, anything about anyone other than me is me-centered, as was my post about Barry at Sandy Hill, J.B. Swank, J-D Jenkins, and Ted on 1703.
The fact I had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to dispute the myth that all men are ogres when it comes to the kitchen is clearly a me-centered assertion of self.
As you all know, I sling these posts to ne’er-do-wells all over the world, mostly the mighty Mezz where I once worked.
Every once in a while I add another to the vaunted ne’er-do-well list, and they get a welcome-message explaining what is going on.
In it I explain that Flag-Out has become a blog-site, wherein I post stuff, and thereafter my siblings all go completely ballistic, particularly my blowhard brother in Boston.
The fact I post anything at all is apparently perceived as a threat to his royal highness and utter supremacy.
So following is another celebration of myself about two other people. Have fun everyone.
Dissertations from Boston, confusing as they are, aren’t self-centered, even when talking about how one spent one’s day. Oh no!

During the final years of my 16&1/2-year sojourn with Regional Transit Service, I became friends with two fellow bus-drivers about two years older than me: Art Dana and Walt Stuart.
Art, like me, was an old gear-head, heavily into cars and trains. Walt was a friend of Art.

Walter reminded me of Aunt Betty, very Connor-like, except he also smoked. He probably would have had little to do with me except for Art.
Walter relieved the 1100-line south the same time I started my first trip with 2403. We’d drag-race down South Ave., merge left at the Library (“the switch”), and swoop down and up through the I-490 on-ramps from downtown.
Thereafter Walt took the passing-lane, and I the right lane. That was because he was turning left at the light, and I was going straight.
I’d pull adjacent to Walt, and he’d open his door to bark snide remarks. By then we had the Gillig Park-and-Ride buses which had a gigantic driver’s window that could be slid open.
The Starships only had a tiny slot for management to open from the outside and excoriate the driver.
The window-slots were also over your door controls, so you could reach in from outside and shut the doors (“secure your bus”).
Walt lived in deepest darkest Henrietta. I say that because I once had a trip to a school for retarded children (“special needs”). It entailed navigating the Henrietta ‘burbs, where garages were often larger than the house, and add-on porches had ramshackle flat roofs.
Houses were only a few feet apart. Front lawns were often littered with rusty abandoned cars, rotting lumber, and/or bed-springs.
Actually, I think Walt lived south of the Thruway. North of it was worse. Route 15 north of the Thruway was all car-dealers. It looked like Las Vegas.
People fear that someday their strip will look like West Henrietta Road (Route 15); which looks like Pleasant Blvd. in Altoony near Daze Inn.
South of the Thruway is more rural and less developed. Route 15 used to be the main entrance from the south into Rochester; now it’s the I-390 expressway.
Walt lived alone with his wife in a house he designed and/or built. He specified two 8x7 single garage doors, and was miffed when his giant F250 Ford pickup wouldn’t fit: too high and too wide over the mirrors.
The first thing I did when I started designing this house was measure the old E250. It needed a garage-door eight feet high, so that’s what we have.
It also was almost nine feet wide over the mirrors, which is why we have a single 8x16 instead of two 8x8s.
Our contractor had a fit; I suppose because the single 8x16 cost more than two 8x8s, but that was what we had specified.
So poor Walter had to park his truck outside (and work under it in the snow). I also think it would have been too long for his garage. Our garage is 24 feet deep, to accommodate the E250, which was about 18 feet long.
The last I heard Walt had cancer — but not lung-cancer. So now he’s probably dead.

Dana was into cars, and had driven bus for years. When I started he had a graying pony-tail, and was a father-figure to all drivers.
I guess he was an only-child, and was living in the family homestead where he had grown up. It was smack in the middle of the city’s crime-ridden 21st ward. Like our house on Winton Road it was an old farmhouse the city had grown up around — different in that he had heavily fortified it with elaborate fencing and an electronic alarm-system. He also had a four-legged alarm-system. An abandoned factory was across the street. If anyone broke in they were facing a .357 Magnum.
Art had no kids. He lived alone with his wife of many years and his dog. He had an assortment of hot-rod parts in his garage and an American-Flyer layout in his basement.
His layout, like most layouts, was more track than anything else. But it was good-looking track, not the cheap tinplate American-Flyer sold.
He had display-tracks on the wall, with a huge assortment of classic American-Flyer equipment. Most of it was diesel; including four sets of classic Alco PAs.
His Rock Island PAs were the most valuable — the rarest. He also had a complete fluted-stainless passenger train with lighted cars — except it was too small, and therefore not to scale.
And most of the stuff ran. He’d put stuff on the track, and operate it. Around and around the Rock Island PA set circulated on a small loop: three units pulling four cars (the engines were longer than the train).
What I remember most was him showing me all his scenery was glued down, so he could vacuum without sucking up anything.
Art was friends with “Frenchy,” another bus-driver, who had never married and hung onto his ‘56 Chevy he had hot-rodded as a wild youth.
By then the ‘56 was a collector-car, especially with its nosed hood, decked trunk, and flippers. It was what we’d now call a “post;” a Two-Ten two-door sedan, metallic olive-green (probably not stock).
The motor was the original Power-Pak 265 with 4-barrel and duals. It had a floor-shift he and Art had installed to its 3-speed.
Apparently he and Art had changed out the cam, putting in a Duntov. Made it a hot-rod; Frenchy was forever grateful.
Art apparently built quite a few chops for people: all Harley-Davidson powered. What mattered was function. “The bitch has got to at least run,” he used to say.
Art used to ride motorbike himself, but gave it up. Which is why we became friends: I still was riding the FZR400, and he’d see me coming in as he pulled out.
Lots of interesting stuff lurked in Art’s garage; including a stock Ford banjo rear-end, a ‘30 Ford 5-window coupe body, and a set of ‘32 frame-rails.
By then Art was too old to do anything with it. He was over 50, and more concerned with visiting his ailing father in the nursing-home. His mother was dead.
Art used to say the best-looking car ever was the ‘50 Mercury; chopped, channeled, sectioned, lowered, done up in flat-gray primer. I used to send printouts of such sleds from my hot-rod calendar.
The last time I saw Art he was bundled up in an open ‘32 Ford hi-boy roadster owned by Jimmy Tranquil, another bus-driver who had stayed true to his roots.
Tranquil was the head of the local ABATE chapter, and bought a new Harley every year. He lived next to the bus-barns in a run-down house that was little more than storage for his many bikes (including a ridable Ariel Square-Four).
Tranquil also wasn’t married; but seemed to have a new girlfriend every minute — all lily-white, flabby, alcohol-sodden Harley-mommas.
Art was in heaven in that ‘32; even though shivering.
The car had a Chevy Small-Block with triple deuces; and according to Tranquil cost $50,000 — that’s late ‘80s.
Before my stroke Art spearheaded resistance to announcing bus-stops on the bus PA. The newer buses had a PA-mike, that management wanted us to announce bus-stops on for the blind.
Art resisted hugely, and held meetings with disabled-groups, including the blind. To announce stops would be a distraction added to the existing madness of driving a bus.
Art succeeded.